Companies often spend millions on the design of their logo in the hope of differentiating their brand, building loyalty, and boosting overall performance. A new study finds another reason to get the logo right: It can cushion the brand in the event of a corporate transgression. Across five experiments, the researchers showed that a cute design—one with babylike features—can inspire consumers to “take care of” the brand if it comes under attack.
In the first experiment, participants saw one of two versions of a logo for a fictitious pharmaceutical company: a cat with a high or a low level of cuteness. Some in each group were told that to increase profits, the firm was raising prices by 300% (putting its drugs out of some patients’ reach); the others were told that prices would be stable. All were then surveyed about their desire to punish the company and whether it deserved to be treated compassionately and protected from harm. Among those who were told about the price increase, participants who saw the cute logo were far less likely to want to punish the firm, and they expressed more interest in protecting it. (Among those told that prices weren’t changing, the cuteness of the logo did not affect responses.)
Subsequent experiments featured logos based on bears and birds and involved various transgressions, such as withholding workers’ overtime pay. They obtained similar results and showed that participants interpreted cute logos to mean that the brands in question were—as infants are—still malleable and thus deserved to be forgiven. However, forgiveness waned if the transgression was severe or repeated. “Brands can use cute appeals to reduce the potential issue of consumer punishment…as such appeals highlight that the brand is still learning,” the researchers write. “For a company planning to enter an industry where consumers frequently complain about a product or service (e.g.,telecommunications)…the brand [could] use cute appeals from the beginning.”
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ABOUT THE RESEARCH “Too Cute to Be Bad? Cute Brand Logo Reduces Consumer Punishment Following Brand Transgressions,” by Felix Septianto and Junbum Kwon (International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2022)
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